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Pumping Up YouTube – YouTube is the leading online video destination for the web, which makes it in turn the leading video search engine. Plus, YouTube content is widely distributed in search results elsewhere, including those of its owner, Google. This session looks specifically at tips and tactics for doing well with YouTube.

After a 10 minute technical delay (couldn’t get to the Internet) we were off!

Manny is up first. He outlines You Tube stats, average viewer in July watched 8.3 hours of video making it a platform businesses should be on for exposure.How are businesses using YouTube?Some are using for storage (videos are bandwidth hogs), some using to share expertise, tips and to launch contests.Opportunities are endless.

What elements affect the way your video ranks on You Tube and what can you do to move your rank needle??First, optimize your content, include a keyword rich title, keyword rich description and tag your video.Put the main key word terms in the beginning of the video Title.Look at other videos in your keyword niche and see what they’ve used for tags and how they’ve been indexed.

Look at statistical data on your competitors pages for more clues on what’s working/not.If you’re looking for additional help on how to tag your videos, use the YouTube search box, the “also try” search option and the “wonder wheel” options.

Look for related videos/content, read the comments left on their videos respond and get involved in any conversation.Leverage your social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, My Space by pushing your video through these channels.

Be consistent in engaging your community, there is direct correlation between showing your videos and ranking (but he doesn’t say how) you’re more visible within YouTube and helps you network.

Monitor your performance on You Tube by reviewing your Insight analytics; it’s a free analytics package.You Tube has added a creators corner, highlights how popular videos have gone popular, how they’ve optimized, use it to see how others are faring online.

Next is Matthew.He’s one of the first product managers hired with YouTube, compliments Manny on his presentation.Starts out with handful of stats… YouTube is the second largest search engine online, fourth largest web property online.

He asks the audience, “How do you define success on YouTube?” To be successful you first need to figure out what you want from your videos before launching your campaign, are you looking to be popular or build brand?

The basics to improve video ranking = be consistent with the keyword in your Title, tags and description.

Keep in mind community opinion is very important, how they view and what they say about your video.You Tube looks at responses and encourages linking out to other videos in your vertical.Turn on your embeds so people will download your video.

So how do you get a lot of video views?How do you make your video’s go viral?One way is to use guerilla marketing tactics, send your blog across the web to news sites, Twitter and Facebook.Be subtle in your branding message; don’t plaster your logo on every frame of the video.They’ve found people respond to this and will push a video to go viral if it's not brand pushy.

Use video responses option and comment to stimulate dialogue.

You can increase views of your video thru paid marketing, use You Tube Promoted Videos to seed discovery.There are some “blunt force methods” as well; making the home page will result in a ton of traffic and views.“The upfront paid investment fuels the fire” of videos going popular.

Use You Tube Insight to find out how people discover your videos.

Learn from your demographic and focus your ad campaigns on these demographics.

Paid discovery (this is their promoted videos program modeled off of Adwords), works on CPC basis, thumbnails and promotion text. Program only offered in English right now, use keyword tools to figure out the best keywords to bid on.Matthew encourages everyone to use the paid ad option, (of course ;)

Once people get to your video, what do you want them to see?Don’t contain yourself to a single video, create a video to represent each of your products, tie them all together through annotations, pop up bubbles to point users to the other videos you have

Last up was Ciaran, he’s going to talk about viral marketing on You Tube.What is viral?It’s cool stuff people like to share.Why should you be interested in viral?

Static brand sites tend to be boring so they create video content to push brand.Content isn’t brand anymore, conversation is.Content is what they talk about.

Failure rates for vial video can be high, they are not always inexpensive to create.On the other hand, some are done on shoestrings and do well, there is no firm formula.You need to have a strategy going into the process,what people do you want to talk to, whom do you want to touch?What demographic do you want to hit?Is your objective to hit sales?Build brand?

Videosallows for immediate response so be sure you can respond to people right away.

There are different types of viral videos, (funny, unbelievable, ones that pose a question/make consumers think/interesting)

People pass videos to see if their friends will be amused, or if they’ll “get it”.Develop your video Titles to be unique/exclusive, let comments roll, work with your agency to figure out how the thumbnail will look.He then showed a number of popular videos and explained why they were successful.

Q&A

Someone asks Matthew Liu from YouTube if his remarks were fact or observation.Matthew responded his how-to rank on YouTube comments were made as observations, not facts.He also said they are looking to improve features and continue to determine elements that help determine what a view is worth.

Question was asked about music copyright. They have an content ID program to identify music played on videos, I found a full explanation of the program here https://www.youtube.com/t/contentid

Are playlists searchable on the search engines?Yes

"Does You Tube Insights converge with Google analytics""No" said Matthew,they are separate programs.There has been discussion on integrating but not being done yet

Question was asked if there were stats on the number of people viewing videos via Google search.Matthew answered he couldn't comment on specifics but did say there were significant numbers from Google and from You Tube search.